If I still believed in miracles and happy endings, I’d wish to rewind the month and go back to that day in the gazebo, when Sebastian surprised me with a different side of himself—a side he hadn’t revealed until the moment I became his.
God, he’d been romantic and sweet. Passionately possessive. A man on a mission to make up for past cruelties. A man on a mission to prove his love.
That was before.
This is after.
Just minutes ago, Lilith dropped her news on our happiness from out of nowhere, stealing our final moments together with a single utterance of truth. And the truth burns like napalm—like a horrendous dousing of acid that clings to my skin. Her confession, along with Sebastian’s lack of a denial in the face of it, haunts me after the door closes on her retreating back.
Neither of us move at first, our inaction allowing disquiet to reach a momentous crescendo. That’s when he looks at me, his face awash with apology.
“Novalee…”
“Don’t,” I say, blocking his attempt to touch me. I bolt into the sitting room, but suddenly, the House of Leo feels cramped and suffocating—all six-thousand square feet of it. This place is no longer my sanctuary. Sebastian’s home has turned into the domain of laden hearts and singed dreams, and yet…
I don’t want to be anywhere else.
He follows me and drops into a chair, and as his hands come up to hide his face, he’s the portrait of guilt. Those same muscular shoulders I held onto in the shower this morning now slump in a way that spears me to the heart with betrayal.
Dread simmers in my gut—a cauldron of despair threatening to boil over. My throat aches with unshed tears as I wander to the wall of windows and gaze at the dreary sky snuffing out the sea. Anything to stave off the incoming deluge.
Because I won’t cry. After everything I’ve been through within these circular walls, this will not destroy me.
“When were you going to tell me?” On the tail-end of that question, I realize I worded it wrong. I pivot to face him. “Were you going to tell me?”
With a sigh, he rubs both palms down his face. “Of course I was going to tell you.”
I cross my arms. “Really?”
“Yes!” As his harsh voice echoes, he tries to hide a wince.
“When?”
“Right before I saw you in Castle’s arms.” The implied accusation detonates in the space between us. He stands, shirtless, his dark blond hair a mess from my fingers all morning. There’s nowhere for me to go when he comes for me, eyes narrowed and brows slashing downward over an icy blue gaze. His audacity to wield anger in this situation shouldn’t surprise me, and it shouldn’t put me on the defensive.
Not this time.
I hold my ground and meet the challenge in his gaze. “Well now I know, so what does she want from you?” My tone asks something else.
What does this mean for us?
Planting his hands on the glass behind me, he presses forward until my spine touches the chilly window. “She doesn’t want a ring and a white picket fence, if that’s what you’re asking.” He’s invading my space, derailing my runaway thoughts until a voice in the back of my mind points out that he’s crowding me on purpose.
To distract from the issue at hand? Or to deflect? I can’t be sure, since he’s good at both.
His eyes deepen to molten ice, lowering to my lips a mere second before darting up again. We’re two stubborn pillars trading prideful stares. My mouth slackens as his lips part, and we share quick and shallow breaths—angry breaths with an undertow of desire.
The ever-present heat between us will never cool. Anger fuels it. Lust fuels it. The sun rising in the east and setting in the west fuels it. Our chemistry is an inevitability, a foregone conclusion before the first sentence of our story was ever written.
“It doesn’t matter what she wants,” he answers, breaking the tense standoff with a flick of his tongue along his bottom lip. “It won’t change a damn thing between you and me.”
Truer words have never been spoken, and yet there’s a contradictory strain in his voice.
I gear up to argue, but my vocal cords fail me, and that’s when he goes on the offensive, his lips silencing the mounting protest on my own. Before he slips his tongue past my defenses, I shove him back.
“You can’t just kiss this away.”
“I know,” he says softly, his anger losing strength. He sinks into a chair again like a hopeless brick on a journey to the bottom of the ocean.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Swallowing a piece of my pride, I settle into the seat across from him.
“I already told you—”
“I know what you said,” I interrupt. “Elise and Landon’s wedding was over a week ago. You’ve known all this time.” I pause, allowing a laborious beat to pass. “And time isn’t on our side.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“Then why didn’t you tell me? I had to hear it from her!” I jab a finger in the direction of the foyer—the scene of the crime where Sebastian’s past pulled the rug out from under me yet again.
“After everything we shared—” My voice cracks as memories of the last few weeks flip through my head. I gave him my body, my soul, my everything, and he couldn’t even give me the truth. “Why?”
“I didn’t want to end our time together like this.”
I shake my head, prepared to dig deeper. “It’s more than that.”
With a scowl, he leans forward, elbows on his knees. “I lost my shit, okay? When I found you on the dance floor with him…” He juts his chin with an undercurrent of bravado that doesn’t match his words. “I didn’t want to be the one to hurt you, again. Is that what you want to hear?”
It’s Sebastian’s go-to; the defensive scorn he wears like cheap armor.
I refuse to give him the fight he wants. “Is she keeping the baby?” I ask, bypassing the issue of Liam Castle, because my relationship with the chancellor doesn’t impact the truth.
And the truth is, Sebastian is as much a coward as Liam when it comes to telling me harsh realities.
Sebastian nods. “She’s against abortion.”
“Are you sure it’s yours?”
A tick goes off in his jaw. “Lilith is a lot of things, but she’s not a liar.”
Maybe not, but she will be the mother of his firstborn—a reality I fear will put me in the position of the “other woman” in this triangle. It won’t matter that, according to law, he’ll be mine after we marry. Not when Lilith has a piece of him that we’ll never get back.
“I’m going to ask you again,” I say, squaring my shoulders. “What does she want from you?”
“Nothing that you have to worry about right now.”
“That’s not good enough!”
“What more do you want from me?” he shouts, jumping out of his chair in an instant. “I’ve told you where I stand, and that’s in the shoes of a fucking ass because even though she’s carrying my blood, all I can think about is you!”
I try not to flinch as his voice booms through the room.
“You’re holding something back.” Shaking my head, I fold myself inside my arms—just a compact body housing a huge heartbreak. “I can feel it, and if we’re going to make a marriage work, we need to have honesty between us.”
Two strides of his long legs close the chasm between us. “You want honesty?” He lowers his face until only an inch separates us, his body caging me in my seat. “I want nothing to do with Lilith, or this baby, or this goddamn Brotherhood. I’d take you out of here and never look back if I could.”
“But you can’t do that.” I don’t know if I believe it, but he does.
He closes his eyes. “No, and I can’t turn my back on this child, either.”
“So where does that leave us?”
“Where it’s always left us. This changes nothing. You belong to me, and I belong to you. If you know nothing else, then know that.”
“Where does that leave Lilith?”
“At the moment, smack in the middle of our lives whether we like it or not, but that doesn’t mean she’s standing between us, Novalee.” As if to prove it to me, he leans down and grazes my mouth with his.
Just a hint, a quiet yearning for forgiveness and understanding.
For trust.
“Stop,” I choke out, my throat caught in a vise of uncertainty. On the cusp of giving in, I move to push him away, but he grabs my wrists, fingers shackling my will.
“I know I fucked up with my bullshit self-sabotage…” he says, pausing long enough to swallow hard, “and I am so damn sorry I put us in this situation, but you’re crazy if you think I’m going to let you walk out that door for the next seven months with this distance between us.”
Regret haunts his sea-blue eyes, the glisten in them tugging at my heartstrings. But I’ve given in too many times in this tower, especially when it comes to Sebastian Stone.
“Distance is all we have.” I yank my wrists from his grasp then give a hard shove to his chest. As he veers back, I launch to my feet before he corners me again.
My gaze cuts to the clock on the wall, and I don’t know whether to feel relieved or sad at the hour. “It’s time.”
“Fuck, not yet,” he groans, casting his gaze heavenward as he drags both hands through his messy hair. “You can’t leave like this.”
“I don’t have a choice.” Something’s wrong with my voice—some sort of ailment that turns my words to stoic strength, even though despair reduces me to shattered pieces.
“Just give me a minute,” he says, gesturing toward his state of half-dressed disarray. “I’ll walk you down.”
“I’d rather go alone.”
“Kissing won’t fix this, but neither will running away.”
“I’m not running away.”
He arches a brow. “Aren’t you?”
“I’m doing my duty, same as you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you have time to figure out if your duty is to Lilith, or to me.” I move past him, my destination the front door, but he grips my wrist and pulls me against his chest.
His shallow breaths tempt my lips, those exhales heavy with the things left unsaid as we stand in a deadlock, bodies flush together.
“I don’t need time, princess.”
“But I do.”
Until that moment, I’ve never seen a man cry—not since finding my father with tears in his eyes when I was ten. The memory is vague, and I question the validity of it, because I’d remember this searing pain of witnessing a loved one in silent agony.
“This isn’t over.” He dashes the moisture from his eyes.
“It’s not over,” I agree softly. “But it is on pause.” It’s all I can give him as I stand on tiptoe to kiss his scruffy cheek.
The fight leaves his bones, his arms lowering degree by degree until I’m free.
But as I exit the House of Leo, I’m far from free. Sebastian shackled and locked my heart during his month, and now he’s got a death grip on the key.